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The Guide to Appraising Antique Furniture

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Many families have one— an older piece of furniture that legend says is a valuable antique piece. If you have one of these pieces or have even found a piece from local antique buyers and sellers, you may want to determine its value. Antique furniture appraisal is a complex process that requires a good amount of knowledge, but there are a number of ways in which you can research the provenance of a piece on your own and learn the value of your antique furniture.

Different Types of Appraisals

To begin, it is important to understand that there are different types of appraisals, each with their own goal. You need to determine what your goal is in getting an appraisal and then act accordingly. Types of appraisals for antiques include:

Insurance appraisals
Market value appraisals
Estate Tax appraisals

Market value appraisals are negotiable, as you use them to determine a sale value for the piece. Appraisals for insurance or Estate Tax purposes offer little wiggle room. In other words, they determine a value that will represent the piece for legal purposes. For Estate Tax appraisals, the federal government itself may wish to conduct the appraisal. You can get an insurance appraisal from a third party. As pieces age, you can get them re-appraised.

What Makes Antique Furniture Valuable?

There are four factors that determine the value of a piece of antique furniture: provenance, quality, rarity, and condition. The easiest one for you to determine on your own is condition. Signs of wear such as rips, gashes, or loose pieces are easy to spot. Quality is somewhat more esoteric, but look for good, solid structure, quality fabrics, and complex detailing in carved wood.

Determining provenance means knowing from what era a piece comes and, as with rarity, typically takes expert knowledge from someone who knows the full catalogue of available antiques of a certain type. As a starting point, you can look through auction listings to see if comparable pieces are out there.

Determining if a Piece is Antique

Before going down the road with any type of appraisal, you want to determine whether a piece has an antique provenance. You also want to assess whether or not the piece has had modern repair work, which can undermine the value of an antique piece.

Glass and Mirrors

Replaced glass and mirrors are one of the most common repairs on antique pieces. An antique gas light, as an example, might have all the original brass components but a new glass ball. You can identify antique glass by its thickness and undertone; antique glass is thinner than contemporary glass and may have a greyish hue. Antique mirrors are thin as well. To test the provenance of a mirror, hold a key at an angle to the glass and look at its reflection. If the reflected tip is very close to the actual key's tip, chances are it is an antique mirror.

Wood Detailing on Antique Furniture

Another sign of antique provenance is the wood itself an a piece of antique furniture, as well as the hardware used in tandem with the wood. Antique tables often have metal discs that have been hammered by hand reinforcing the leg to the table top. You can also inspect the veneer. If it is thick and uneven, you may have an antique on your hands. Finally, if you feel confident, you can remove a screw carefully and inspect it to determine whether a piece is old. An antique screw is uneven as opposed to modern, machined screws.

Assessing Upholstery on Antique Furniture

As with glass, upholstery on antique furniture may be new. You want to look underneath where the nails attach the upholstery to the piece. If there are a number of nail holes in the wood, you may have newer upholstery on the piece.

Comparing Antique Pieces

Once you determine whether your piece is antique, you can run a market value appraisal on your own by comparing it to similar pieces. An antiques furniture value guide is a helpful tool, but one of the most direct ways is to scour antique auctions. Assemble a long list of prices from auctions of ebay antiques and from other resources, toss out the highest and lowest prices, and then average out the remaining numbers to get an accurate market value.